Expanding deposit to non-carbonated beverages could help recycling

Peter Reuell

Monday

Mar 31, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2008 at 6:00 PM

Non-carbonated drinks, which now account for nearly a third of all beverages sold in the state, were left out of the law, meaning billions of lemonade, iced tea, Gatorade and water bottles wind up in the trash or in recycling bins.

Walk around any one of the handful of sports fields in Milford, town health officer Paul Mazzuchelli said this week, and what's most interesting is what you won't see.

Coke cans, Pepsi bottles, even the occasional discarded beer can or bottle - most are likely absent.

You'll still find trash cans overflowing with empties, though, but these are empty water bottles, discarded bottles of Gatorade and other sports drinks, iced tea, lemonade and other non-carbonated beverages.

Under the state's bottling law, which went into effect in 1983, bottles and cans of carbonated beverages like soft drinks, beer and mineral water can be redeemed for a nickel a piece.

Non-carbonated drinks, which now account for nearly a third of all beverages sold in the state, were left out of the law, meaning billions of lemonade, iced tea, Gatorade and water bottles wind up in the trash or in recycling bins.

It's a paradox that's getting attention on Beacon Hill.

Legislation introduced this year would expand the bottle bill to include water and other non-carbonated drinks, and raise the redemption on bottles and cans to 10 cents to adjust for inflation since the law was passed.

The proposal was referred to the Legislature's Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, where it was tabled last week for further study, effectively killing it.

Among local officials, though, the measure found widespread support, though not for purely altruistic reasons.

Including water and other beverages in the bottle bill, they said, would almost certainly drive consumers to keep millions of bottles out of the trash, easing the burden on local trash collection programs.

"I would say it's a very high number that get thrown in the rubbish and do not get recycled," Mazzuchelli said of water bottles. "I think it does add up. I think it would be a significant amount, not only in tonnage, but also in bulk."

With the town paying nearly $68 for every ton of garbage it hauls to an incinerator in Millbury, he said, getting those bottles out of the waste stream will save the town money.

How much money?

Though it's tough to say how many water, juice and other unredeemable bottles are thrown away by residents in any single town, the volume statewide is staggering.

In 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available, more than 1.3 billion non-redeemable beverage containers were sold, according to research by the Connecticut-based Container Recycling Institute.

Getting even a fraction of those bottles and cans out of the waste stream, Executive Director Betty McLaughlin said, would save cities and towns thousands.

"Nobody is saying let's have a deposit on everything, and bring it all back to the grocery store," she said. "But the sheer volume" is considerable.

Adding water, juice and non-carbonated drinks to the bottle bill, she said, will keep a huge volume of plastic, glass and aluminum out of landfills and incinerators, while allowing towns to run smaller curbside recycling programs for other items, including paper and non-beverage containers.

"You would get a higher participation rate," she said. "You get a higher quality material (to recycle) and it's not funded by the taxpayers."

Though opponents of expanding the bottle bill point to increased costs for consumers, McLaughlin believes deposits are akin to a user fee.

Unlike community-wide recycling programs, which are paid for by all taxpayers, deposits on redeemable beverages are factored into the sale price, hitting only those customers who buy a product.

What's more, she said, customers who want to get their money back can, simply be redeeming bottles and cans for their deposit.

"You're going to get your nickel back," she said. "If you don't get it back, it's because you choose not to.

"It may raise the price of production, but somebody has to pay to recycle this material. The question becomes do you want the general taxpayer to foot the bill, or do you want the people who use it to foot the bill? Maybe little old ladies who live in town don't want to pay for your beer-drinking habit."

But Chris Flynn, president of the Massachusetts Food Association, a lobbying group representing grocery stores and supermarkets, believes the bottle bill, even in its present form, is an impediment to the simplest way to get the bottles and cans out of the trash: recycling.

"When the law went into effect, we didn't have a comprehensive recycling program," he said. "(Today) 85 percent of communities have a recycling program. We're asking the question, 'Why does that carbonated beverage have to be dragged back to the food store for three times the cost?'

"The bottle law is an archaic approach, it is a costly approach and it is diverting attention from comprehensive recycling."

Rather than trying to expand the law, Flynn said, the association believes the law should be scrapped and residents should be encouraged to recycle through other means such as pay-to-throw trash programs.

"Stop talking about bribing and taxing our citizen into doing the right thing," he said. "Curbside (recycling) is much cheaper."

Despite Flynn's arguments to the contrary, local officials this week said they would welcome efforts to expand the bill to include water and other non-carbonated drinks.

"It's long overdue," Framingham Public Works Director Peter Sellers said. "I don't think anyone anticipated the proliferation of bottled water, which has kind of outstripped the use of carbonated beverages and fruit juices. I think we all think it's a good idea, both for environmental reasons and also because it's a sound practice for solid waste disposal."

Though the change won't likely save towns much money in the short term, the long-term benefits could be great.

"The problem is ... the bottles are so thin now, you have to create a (large) volume of it," Franklin Public Works Director Brutus Cantoreggi said. "You can fill up one of those large bags, and it probably weighs three pounds."

While there may not be much to be had in terms of savings, there are still benefits to getting more bottles out of the trash and off the street.

"We constantly fight the battle over here," Cantoreggi said. "Anytime we go out and clean up a ball field, they're just all sports bottles and water bottles.

"Anything we can do to encourage recycling, I'm 100 percent behind. I couldn't be more tickled if that happens."

Peter Reuell can be reached at 508-626-4428, or at preuell@cnc.com.

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